GP-IN: An immersive urban environmental geochemistry research experience as a pathway to careers in the geosciences

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Urban communities often suffer the greatest damage from poor water, air, and soil quality. Yet, while undergraduate geoscience programs are the foundation for jobs tasked with remedying these problems, the racially minoritized residents who disproportionately experience environmental burdens are vastly underrepresented in these fields. Furthermore, the traditional curriculum offerings in geoscience do not adequately cover issues of relevance to urban populations. The PIs propose to create a novel high school environmental geoscience education and research program using a community-centric environmental justice approach. PIs hypothesize that an immersive, locally-based, culturally responsive research experience in urban environmental geochemistry will broaden a pathway to the geosciences for underrepresented minoritized (URM) students. This will address two pressing issues of social justice: underrepresentation of racial minorities in geoscience careers and disparities in urban environmental contamination.This project seeks to engage students from racially minoritized groups by using a two-phased activity approach: (1) an academic year, school-based, inquiry-driven research experience which will involve co-mentoring by Villanova geoscience faculty and a graduate student, to investigate water, soil and air contamination within the students’ local community, and (2) the Villanova Environmental Geochemistry Summer Institute (VEGSI), an immersive, on-campus, four-week long summer research experience where high school students (9 per year) collaborate with 3 Villanova undergraduate geoscience majors on existing, local urban environmental geochemistry research projects with established community partners. VEGSI will include a professional development series featuring a diverse panel of Philadelphia-centered experts speaking to the importance of both lived experience and professional efforts to redress environmental harm, furthering participant aspiration and awareness of geoscience professions. PIs plan to evaluate project success through a series of assessments, including focus groups, pre- and post-period attitude and knowledge surveys that gauge changing interest in geoscience fields and agency to engage in environmental stewardship.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.